“We’re bare bones now,” said Robert Kirker, president of the Minerva Teachers Association. “There’s no place to make any more cuts.” Minerva Central School District, a tiny district in the Adirondacks, stands to lose $246,849 in aid, or about 25 percent of its budget.
Leaders in these small districts say that the proposed cuts come at the expense of some of our state’s most vulnerable students.
“We don't have any extra staff in terms of core areas,” Kirker said. “We have one art teacher. We have one music teacher. We have one gym teacher. We have one teacher for each subject area, one teacher for each elementary grade. I suppose we could put two elementary grades together, but we tried that in the past, and it wasn't effective.”
With just 116 students, Minerva has disproportionately high levels of need; 59 percent of district students are economically disadvantaged, and 21 percent of students have disabilities. The district was able to use COVID-19 funds to hire a much-needed counseling staff, a part-time school psychologist, school social worker and school counselor who have been critical to addressing the mounting mental health crisis among teens and children.
“For years, we have had students who had no counseling available to them whatsoever, and now they are finally getting the counseling they need. The concern now is that they are going to lose that,” he said. “We've got people in the schools that are building relationships with students, and I would hate to have that ripped away from them,” he said.